Highlights

Lil B“Katy Perry”

I was at the show featured in this video for “Katy Perry” with my good pal Mickey Smallz, and met up with Sammy D’Bling and his goons too. There was a dude (or girl, which is still in debate) who was filming the whole time with a GIANT light atop the camera, and Sam mentioned, “Dude looks like a heroine fiend.” S/he did, sorta, but apparently, they were filming for this video here! I thought it was all an elaborate scheme to get the crowd hype, but it’s Lil B, so no-need.

It was my first Lil B show. I was definitely saved. Sam said he enjoyed the spectacle. Mickey ended up with a short stomach flu. The next day he was vomiting with the door closed in my bathroom murmuring, “Task force. Must protect Lil B ‘The BasedGod’ at all times.” *vomits*

Enjoy the spectacular new video for “Katy Perry” by Lil B featuring ME and Sam and pals in the background!!

“Contact”

Neil Reinalda, back to working his ass of to get your ass working its ass off… to ambient music? Sure, why not. As PHORK, the LA-based producer has been sculpting a sound that is as peripherally pleasing as it is intensely focused and detailed, chopping hazy atmospheres and found sounds into restless microbeats for an impressive (if modest) run of cassette releases over the past couple of years. Here, for his debut vinyl affair on NNA (a label he’s worked with twice, previously), that sound is more realized than ever and its intended effect – the tension that comes with the push/pull of aesthetic opposites – is palpably felt; weightlessness feels massive, smoothness feels bumpy, laziness feels like it’s the hardest job in the world. And yes, it is tense, and yes, it is also relaxing: a place where you can break a sweat blinking or where your index finger gets to do its own little dance, disco ball lights strobing across the second knuckle. Today we’ve got the drop on the first taste of High End with the video for “Contact,” a nice visual rendering by Marco Braunschweiler of Reinalda’s rapid fire editing to infer motion, progression, and unity from disparate, dissimilar static building blocks. Peep it below and watch for the record’s release this June. OR scope the SoundCloud here for the “Contact” single.

“Paradise” feat. Megabone

If I were to list EVERYTHING Kool Keith owns, it’d be… well, the Internet. I mean, anything you can find on the Internet, he owns it. MORE: he owns Lil B. That’s write, ‘cause it’s been written, but Kool Keith wipes his ass with The BasedGod’s pink bandana. It’s not that this is a matter of opinion, but it’s ALL his. And by “his,” I mean Kool Keith. Nobody knows how old he is, either. Fuckin’ could be a vampire for all we know. Probably is a vampire.

It’s just nice to know that all this DIY and indie and hood and corporation and buzz and [etc.] in New York City is all under Kool Keith’s ownership. I can get on that. More-so, I can get on his newest release Demolition Crash out May 27 on 2xCD via Fat Beats. He owns Fat Beats (maybe, not really; no). He owns you (truth). He runs rap. When you hear his ass on the radio, lemme know, ‘cause that’ll be the day Kool Keith is just the CEO of rap. But as of right now, Kool Keith pretty much runs “Paradise” with Megabone as his security and backup.

Girl’s Basketball

I often get depressed that contemporary indie rock is quickly becoming nothing more than utilitarian music for Starbucks and Urban Outfitters. It seems like every year the big breakout “indie” bands get progressively less weird, but as a result, this has created something of a burgeoning subculture of bands/songwriters who are interested in creating song based music that is largely divorced of commercial intention, yet still firmly rooted in pop song craft. This aesthetic has grown exponentially in recent years and in some ways, I feel like William Alexander’s Girls Basketball is an excellent example of where big indie rock and the weirdo pop scene both meet and split.

Girls Basketball is first and foremost a goddamn beautiful record. Alexander has a gift for song craft and sampling that is in line with folks like Jib Kidder and Dean Blunt. Throughout these nine songs, the dichotomy between the organic and the sampled is constantly blurred in an extremely subtle way. Like Kidder and Blunt, Alexander doesn’t draw attention to the fact that many of his pieces are built around samples but focused listening really reveals the odd ideas about space in Alexander’s work. In this way, Girls’ Basketball is also reminiscent of Yellow House era Grizzly Bear as well as the oft-forgotten work of bands like Califone and Castanets. Grizzly Bear’s Yellow House was an excellent record that really explored the relationship between lovely folk music and sample based electronics in a manner that both Califone and Castanets had previously set a precedent for. However, where Grizzly Bear seemed to largely abandon this aesthetic for more commercial prospects on later releases, Alexander seems to pick up and prove that there’s still plenty of interesting things that can be done with this combination of materials. This is apparent from the haunting electro-folk of opener “You Can Take It” onwards and the suite of songs from the title track through the end of the album really explores the border between the natural and the sampled in a truly subtle yet always beautiful way. Alexander’s music proves that there is still a lot more to explore in the world of lovely indie pop but that it’s up to the other tape weirdos of the world to do it.

Girls’ Basketball is out now via Juniper Tree Songs. You can stream the album in its entirety below:

WĒNQUÁN (excerpt 2)

Remember the good-old Rraro days when it was like, “Oh, shit: new Rraro just popped… FIND A BLOG THAT HOSTS THE .zip OF IT!!!” or “Wait, THAT is a Rraro side project? SICK!” or “Nahh, nahh! That’s just the [first, second, or third] volume of the series.” ….remember? That doesn’t happen anymore. Now, it’s like you go to the Rraro exhibit in Long Island City and it’s a fucking elevator with two speakers in it, then Boychild enters the elevator and is totally confused at three people just chillin’ in there, but Ritch thinks it’s a good idea to ask for Boychild’s phone number, so there’s just a gaze, the doors open, and that Rraro keeps on jammin’ out. But yo, who actually still has and listens to coveted Rraro cassette tapes. If you out there, then “Hi!”

They’re playing Bone Thugs’ “Let’s Ride & Get High” on the sales floor in front of me, and all I can do is imagine what the new BODYGUARD will sound like. Where is it coming out on? What does it mean? Do you think Rraro has a lot of private house shows in the Bronx? Maybe Boychild has been attending them? Mega cool sometimes is just the music. Rraro wins. WĒNQUÁN (excerpt 2) is above. Full frame Rraro visage. Album TBA 2014. Hi!

“BIG BOOTY BITCH Foodman ブビ＆ツヤ REMIX”

Every day is a Foodman Celebration.
Every week is The Festival of Foodman.
Every month is Foodman History Month.

The History of Foodman:
食品まつり a.k.a foodman crawled out of a cosmic chrysalis suspended in the sky over Japan. His freshly constructed body, segmented into chunks of purple and green matter, ached with growing pains. As he began the descent to Earth, slipping downward inch by inch, his sore wings unfolded in all of their grandeur (flecked with crystalline pockets of color, iridescent, framed in lines of the deepest black) and these wings blocked out the sun for three days. Foodman didn’t know any better. He floated, stuporous and vaguely discontent. Shrouded in darkness, worried that some bitter god sought atonement for past transgressions, the populace began to pile culinary offerings outside of their homes. This seemed like a good idea. Spurred by the smell wafting up from the sudden victual flood, the space butterfly flapped his wings, tore out of his static orbit, and fell landward. As he plummeted toward the city, his wings were caught between two communication towers, tangled in wires and skewered by vast antennae. The wings snapped clean off of his cylindrical body, which plopped unceremoniously into the street for all to see. His gnarled form withered instantly, shredding decaying layers of green and purple flesh, shrinking down into the naked body of a man. No one dared approach him, considering him the sky-darkening deity incarnate, or just some really fucked up dude, as he slept for three more days face down against the concrete. On the seventh day, Foodman awoke to find the sun shining, and the forgotten piles of shrimp and rice and cucumber putrefying in the street. He picked up a shard of crystal from the husk of his broken wings, walked to a nearby cafe, and traded the crystal for a skewer of meat. Still groggy, but pulsing with potential, Foodman sat and ate.

Listen to “BIG BOOTY BITCH Foodman ブビ＆ツヤ REMIX” and let your mind sketch out its own Foodman Mythos (NB: the presence of a titular Big Booty Bitch is purely optional). The music of Shokuhin Maturi contains enough bonkers ideas, mauled samples, and warped rhythms to stimulate your brain into joyful creation, listen after listen after listen. Here, Foodman pulverizes a kinetic electro-“ghettotech” cut from Japanese crew Nature Danger Gang into a clattering footwork rhythm somewhere behind his conjured bursts of hi-fi electronic chaos. After modern classic tapes on Orange Milk and Digitalis, the maestro returns with a tape on Noumenal Loom sometime soon. These eyes have rarely, if ever, been more peeled.